It is all about the awards

For years I fought submitting awards for Marketing, but lost the battle a few years back. because, once you win a few, they expect you to keep winning. Which I have been able to do year after year since the creative team and staff I work with are brilliant.

The process requires that I dedicate at least a full work week several times a year to creating the binders that go out for the various award submissions. That is a lot of time, and you have to pay to submit (some of them are pretty spendy) your work, so it is time and money. So we can get shiny pieces of acrylic!!! (Bosses like shiny trophy's for their offices, they may say they don't care, but once they get one, they must have MORE.) Oh, and bragging rights, yeah, actually, the only useful thing I find is that they do look really good on a resume.

But each year as I get them ready to go at the last minute I ask myself, is it worth it? Really worth the time? The answer is probably no. But like I said, now there are expectations, we must win each year. And if we don't win, in whatever category we lost (and some we did not even enter), we must check out the winner and copy them for next year.

My favorite is when they come back to me and say, "Hey, I saw so n so's entry that won for the blah, blah category, our blah, blah is better, why did we not enter that category."

Time, people, time. I can only put together so many of these wretched binders!!! About six or seven is my limit - then if I did not care before, I really don't care at all by the seventh. The first few binders I will spend all kinds of time and creativity to make sure the are presented perfectly, with just a touch of cleverness...just enough to catch the judges eye (you have no idea how hard that is.) The first three are magic (and win quite often) but I lose momentum after that....my great idea to print small versions of our bus ads and place them on a toy bus, hand painted to match our local transit buses, is long gone by now.

At this point, I can barely be bothered to find the right size folder......can't I just staple them? (I don't by the way, I make some one go out and buy me a binder, cause you don't want me in public right now :)

Invariably some well meaning co-worker comes by my office to see what I am doing and makes all kinds of suggestions. Oh, you could do this, or you could do that. Wouldn't it be great if you did (blank)?! They are so proud of themselves. And to be honest, I would have been too, a few days back, but the closer we get to deadline, well, not so much so today.

Because after they are all away in their boxes and I have the FedEx tracking numbers, and I am running (driving actually) to the airport to make sure they go out today.

The next thing that is going to happen, come Monday is I am going to be asked where "this" or "that" is or" how am I coming along on that project, didn't you already do that?"

When? When did you think I had time to do that?

"Maybe we should not do the awards if they are going to cause such problems, or maybe if you started on them sooner.

Ah, now you are just getting my hopes up about not submitting the awards, I know you are, cause one year I skipped on set of submissions and when you came back from the show asking why we did not submit, I had to remind you that you said.....yeah, I knew I was losing that battle going in. Note to self, always submit for awards, no matter what is being said.

Start them sooner, you say? My gawd your a genius. So if I start sooner, time becomes more elastic? Really, I did not know that, and you think I would have figured where the stretchy place was when it came to "time" cause I have been pulling, bending, and squeezing time for years to try to get more of it. (especially in September and October.)

So I am at a reprieve, that is until the winners are announced. If we are on the list of winners, woohoo!!! If I am really lucky, I can get out of the awards ceremony! If we happen not to win.....oh, I will hear about that :)

So, I am confused, do I want to win or not? Actually, I just want to go back to my cave, and find the page with the word "award" in my dictionary, rip it out and burn it. :)